Why We Blog

(Disclaimer: I have just been informed by a peer reviewer that the first two paragraphs of this blog are very general and that the “hook” comes in paragraph three. If you are looking for hooks, start with paragraph three. If you are looking to follow the sometimes random, stream of consciousness wanderings of my mind, start with paragraph one. Disclaimer: done.)

Every blogger has reasons for writing what they do. Some blog about a particular issue or cause.  Some about a hobby or a passion. Some blog to follow a particular field and (as an example) many librarians like me are writing about issues related to libraries, technology or whatever aspects of the information profession are of interest.

Some write to be read and some don’t. I have maintained a blog similar to a private diary for some time and while I previously kept the privacy settings on that blog set to public (i.e. anyone can view) I recently changed this, realizing that the things I wrote in that blog were really intended to be read only by myself and a select few.  I wasn’t writing anything there that was particularly off the wall but still…somehow making it private felt like the right thing to do.

Some do write to be read by others, though, and again, their reasons are diverse and sometimes complex. There are bloggers who love an audience or the process of sharing thoughts with their friends and the rest of us in cyberspace. Others use the process of writing as a personal way to communicate, both with themselves and with others. For some, their blog is the only place where they truly feel safe; able to talk about who and what they are in privacy and where there is no one to judge. I have one friend who recently told me that she blogs “feedback” to herself because, she says, it is the only way that she can process feelings and analyze thoughts and actions objectively.

So what does this have to do with the Voyaging Librarian?

A little less than a year ago, I started this blog with the intent to chronicle a three month library internship in Austria.  I wrote a couple of entries (as can be seen) but it never got off the ground. There were a lot of reasons for this, but the one that that I come back to the most is: fear. What if what I wrote was inaccurate or inappropriate?  What if I said something about myself or someone else that I shouldn’t? If I put myself out there and wrote about desserts made with Erdbieren instead of Erdbeeren would everyone laugh at me and think I was an idiot?

The whole process of over-analyzing and perfectionizing a blog that I wasn’t even writing was so exhausting that it’s no wonder that every time I sat down to write I felt tired and reluctant. Plus, the timing often interfered with a fun outing to drink with friends at the local biergarten or one of my nightly Battlestar Galactica marathons with two awesome people who (if they are reading this) know who they are!

Then, later, there was a fear that I would not remember events accurately. Which, naturally, was not a situation that was likely to improve much as time ticked on. In fact, I must be suffering some involuntary amnesia because there are parts of that summer – weeks now! –  that I can’t even remember.

Awhile back someone told me that they were worried I had disappointed myself by not finishing this blog. And I was disappointed, although perhaps not in the same way that this individual envisioned. I was not disappointed because of guilt. I did not break a promise to myself or let myself down. I was disappointed because I love to write. To play with words, to tell stories. To see events come to life through words and pictures. (And, as can be seen in the case of my flight to Europe, very bad pictures!)

And I didn’t write. For almost the entire summer. And for a long time afterward.

So, now I am back and with the goal of finishing this blog. I may not write every day or even every week. Maybe not even for months at times. But I will do it on my own terms. And in my own way.

I have no idea what the future will hold, but I want to finish this story as best I can. Even though there are some things I cannot write about or simply don’t remember. In the latter case, if I have to come up with bizarre and highly inaccurate tales to fill in the missing gaps, I will.

Or maybe I will just write about libraries. Or Julie Andrews. Whatever seems to click for me in the moment.

So now it begins - again.

Sincerely,

The Voyaging Librarian

The Flight - Part II

So, now I come to my current trip – the flight overseas to Salzburg, Austria to begin my three-month library internship. This was to be my first overseas flight since 1998, a time when I was not afraid of flying. Despite the fact that I A) procrastinated on packing until about an hour before I had to leave for the airport and B) the fact that flying stresses me out (period) I was not very anxious leading up to my flight overseas. I knew that I was going to be flying on Lufthansa which, according to AirDisaster.com (a site I have discovered courtesy of my amazing and wonderful boyfriend), has a relatively low occurrence of serious “events” (whatever that means). Plus I knew that I would be flying on an Airbus A330 which is a pretty good plane. Right?

The flight went smoothly overall, I have to say. There was one bad moment during take-off when the roaring engines suddenly cut back to near-silence. I assume this was because of some noise ordinance in the neighborhood we were flying over. Nevertheless it scared the living s*** out of me until I realized that the plane was still climbing. I was also a bit agitated by turbulence that we experienced somewhere over Greenland. (At least that’s where it looked like we were when I glanced out of the window.) But honestly, how the hell do you tell the difference between Greenland and that other s*** in the Arctic, anyway?

Everything else about the flight was pretty ok. I actually slept comfortably on my tray table for 2-4 hours. Both dinner and breakfast were served and the drink cart came by at least twice in between each meal. Unbelievable – I hadn’t had a meal on a plane in 10 years.

I don’t know why, but for some reason I was moved by the fact that we received meal service. Somehow, in some way, being served food (even airplane food) made the whole flying experience much more humanizing. Part of the problem with flying is that you are packed into a metal tube with hundreds+ other people in tiny little seats that are too close together – much like cattle are packed into freight cars for shipping. In the case of human-transport you are actually paying to be shipped like cattle cargo but in the “old days” (i.e. a mere decade ago) there were little things that made the whole experience feel less degrading than it does nowadays. At least for me it did.

Like being fed, even if the food was absolutely terrible. I know that there are many who would disagree with me or who don’t care how they fly as long as they get where they need to go. But I imagine that there are probably also some that have experienced the same sort of feelings as those I’m talking about.

Anyway, as I said, the flight was fine. We made it to Frankfurt, Germany in 9 hours and 35 minutes as advertised. We bustled joyfully out of the plane and down metal staircases (no jet way) to buses that were waiting to transfer us to the main terminal. I’m not sure whether Frankfurt is a Lufthansa hub (maybe most German cities are) but there were many, many Lufthansa planes there. Given my enhanced state of jet lag I decided that it would be amusing to take pictures of the row upon row of Lufthansa planes. Big planes, little planes. Many planes. All Lufthansa planes.

So I did.

Then came the propeller plane.

My connection flight from Frankfurt to Salzburg was on Austrian Airlines and since the flight is less than an hour, I assumed that the plane would certainly be smaller than my overseas flight. I had not exactly counted what I got, though.

To get on small connecting flights like mine to Salzburg, you give your ticket to an agent at a door which leads outside to a waiting bus. The bus takes you to your plane. I watched as my bus passed big jets, then little jets, each plane in the row smaller than the last until finally…we arrived.

At first I thought it was a joke. I mean, the plane we stopped next to seriously looked like it might have been used in the movie Never Cry Wolf. Ever seen that one? It’s about a guy who travels to Alaska to study wolf populations and to see what is causing the decline of caribou (a major part of the wolves’ diet) in that region. He has to fly on a propeller plane with engines that cut out in a very climactic scene. I could be wrong but from what I remember, the pilot has to reach out of the window and do something with the propellers to get the engine restarted.

Looking at my Austrian Airlines flight I wondered whether I had missed the notice about mandatory passenger propeller-emergency training. I mean seriously. This plane was tiny. I was on eye-level with the pilot standing next to the damn thing and I am not a tall girl.

I was not thrilled.

The flight itself was quite pretty. They usually are when you are flying so close to the ground that you can count the number of sheep grazing in a given field. The only bad moment came when we intentionally or unintentionally flew into an area of what looked to be turbulent thunderclouds. The plane dropped sharply and abruptly for what felt to be ages (probably just a second or two) and then shook from side to side as though a giant air-mastiff and grabbed us in its invisible jaws and was cheerfully worrying us like a dead squirrel.

Worse than that, I could have sworn that the engines cut out for a moment. I really thought we were going to die. And trust me; for once it was not just me. Other people were actually screaming and panicking when it happened – that’s how bad it was.

But I have to say…aside from this unpleasant incident, our flight was quick, relatively smooth and we did arrive in Salzburg whole and well (if a little shaken up). We actually flew over the place where I will be staying for the next three months as the plane was landing and I got a real thrill – wondering about the adventures yet to come.


So I finally made it to Salzburg. Sadly, over 200 people, also flying on an Airbus 330, on the same day and over the same ocean, were not so lucky. I would like to say that I felt a strong sense of connection to those people en route from Rio Di Janeiro to Paris, especially the others that may have been afraid of flying like I am. But I don’t think you can really understand unless you are actually there, experiencing what they must have experienced, in real time.

I know, I know. This has nothing to do with libraries or librarianship. Or my internship for that matter (except for the fact that I used air transport to get to my internship destination). But, as I mentioned before, this blog is not just about libraries. I have a feeling that a lot of the added flavor one gets from living in a foreign country for any given period of time, would be lost if I restricted my entries to books, research and the Dewey Decimal Classification System.

And trust me…there will be plenty to say about that too.

The Flight - Part I

I do not enjoy flying. When I was a kid I loved it. I looked forward to going to the airport and flying on a plane like most kids look forward to Magic Mountain or Disneyland. My love of flying spanned three European trips between the ages of 14 and 20 and even memories of severe jet lag could not dampen the anticipation, the excitement of the unknown as I prepared for each new voyage overseas or elsewhere.

All of that ended in 2000 or so. I’m not sure what happened, although I know it was not a single, traumatic event. I do remember getting on a plane from Omaha to Seattle in the spring of 1999 and feeling anxious during a bumpy take off. It was a year later, on a flight to Hawaii, that I realized that I was actually scared to be on the plane.

Terrified. For the entire flight. Take-off to landing.

I remember sitting near the gate waiting to board the plane and that my father, who had dropped my sister and I off for the flight, was also there (this was prior to 9/11 when non-flyers could go to the gate). I told my dad that I was “a little bit nervous about flying.” His helpful reply: “Look! The engine is on fire!”

Now you know you are suffering from an irrational and paranoid fear of flight when someone makes such a lame and obvious joke and you whip around in terror, fully expecting to see the waiting aircraft consumed in flames. In fairness to him, he had flown with me many times and knew nothing except that I loved travel and being on planes. He must have assumed that I was joking. I think he finally “got it” when he practically had to drag me onto a flight to Washington D.C. a few weeks later while I bawled, convinced that I was heading to my death.

Ever since then I have battled with varying levels of flight fear. Unfortunately the only solutions to this problem are either A) to keep flying and try to work through it or B) to sit at home and never go anywhere. Since I love to travel, staying at home would probably kill me and since the technology for teleporting is not yet available, I opt to continue flying.

My fear is much much less than it used to be. I used to get on every single flight convinced that I was going to die, palms sweating with visions of planes dropping from the sky dancing through my head like a demented version of “The Night Before Christmas.” Now I get on most flights in relatively good shape. Aside from mild anxiety during take off and a few bad moments when turbulence hits, I do pretty well. Landing does not bother me so much. I guess my logic there is: “Well, at least we were supposed to be heading in that direction.” No surprises, right?

I do especially well if the person sitting next to me is also afraid of flying and is freaking out. As horrible as it sounds, there is something about keeping it together when somebody else is freaking out that really helps calm the nerves during stressful situations. Especially if that person happens to have the exact same phobia that you do.

The Beginning

Greetings! As many (if not all ;-) of my readers know, I am an American graduate student finishing up my Master’s degree in Library and Information Science. My last class is an internship which will take place in Salzburg, Austria from June to August 2009. During this time period I will be responsible for maintaining the library of a non-profit organization that convenes an international array of academics and intellectuals to discuss issues of global interest. One of the more interesting factoids about this organization is that it operates out of an eighteenth century palace (yes, an honest to goodness palace) which was used to film outdoor scenes for the movie “Sound of Music.” (Maria and the kids capsizing their canoe into the lake, anyone?)

I am keeping this blog to document my experience overseas. While many entries will revolve around my internship and librarianship, I also plan to write about topics unrelated to libraries. These may include any personal experiences, thoughts or reflections that come up while I am living abroad.

And so…let the voyage begin.